


i'm your king (and you're my lionheart)

by thegirl



Series: when i am king, you shall be queen [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Execution, F/M, Kidnapping, Possessive Behavior, Pregnancy, Teen Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 17:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4146972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirl/pseuds/thegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ah hah!” Tommen lets out a victory cry and steps back “I knew you were joking!”</p>
<p>“Not joking, Tom!” she laughs, and pulls a hand through her hair. “I just think if they knew about our... news, then suddenly you wouldn’t be finding your way to our chamber so much.”</p>
<p>Tommen turns this over in his mind.</p>
<p>“I swear to the gods, if you’re not really pregnant I’m going to-”</p>
<p>“What?” Arya smirks, pushing herself off the bed and walking towards him “What will you do?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Part Three in the King Tommen and Queen Arya series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm your king (and you're my lionheart)

Tommen thinks his heart may have stopped.

He can’t seem to find a single word to say, his mouth is open slightly and there’s a kind of choking sound that he can’t seem to stop.

His wife is sitting on the end of their bed, one foot tucked under her bum and the other hanging off the end, swinging side to side. She looks a bit like a pixie from the fairytales, sly and mischievous and constantly amused by some small thing or the other.

“R-really?” Tommen finally manages to find something to say.

Arya’s eyes crinkle as she replies “Yes, really.”

“No, Arya, I mean- _really?”_

Tommen has become quickly wary of taking anything his wife says to his face at, well, face value. He’s still a little bitter about the time she told him that Ser Pounce was in fact Lady Pounce and giving birth to a litter, and that was why he’d gotten so fat. He’d gone rushing into the kitchens at two in the morning, and had ended up giving some poor serving girl the fright of her life. She had made it up to him (in bed, mostly) but still.

Arya laughs a little and rolls her eyes “ _Really,_ Tom. Do you think I’d survive your mother’s wrath if you told her and it turned out not to be true?”

Tommen squints at her for a second, before taking a step forward, placing a hand on her belly.

“It feels normal,” He says doubtfully.

“Well it won’t in a couple of months,” Arya says, “But I don’t think we’ll need to inform the small council just yet.”

“Ah hah!” Tommen lets out a victory cry and steps back “I knew you were joking!”

“Not joking, Tom!” she laughs, and pulls a hand through her hair. “I just think if they knew about our... news, then suddenly you wouldn’t be finding your way to our chamber so much.”

Tommen turns this over in his mind.

“I swear to the gods, if you’re not really pregnant I’m going to-”

“What?” Arya smirks, pushing herself off the bed and walking towards him “What will you do?”

“I’ll-” Tommen is suddenly finding it hard to swallow again as his wife shrugs off her robe. He’s seen her naked so many times now, but he never stops marvelling over her - she is all his, as he is all hers, and she is so beautiful.

“Come on,” Arya says, and begins pulling him towards their bed “The petitioners won’t be here for another hour or so. Show me what you’ll do.”

Tommen is more than happy to comply.

.

Arya makes it very clear, very quickly, that she dislikes pregnancy.

“I don’t know how my mother did it,” she says, words muffled slightly by the bread roll she’s chewing in the side of her mouth “I keep on throwing up and I’m hungry all the time. I can’t do this five times. I can’t.”

Tommen shrugs and knocks his foot against hers beneath the table. Outwardly she has no reaction but beneath the table she retaliates with a good solid kick, that would have really hurt had he not still been wearing his riding boots. “Pycelle says the vomiting should abate soon enough, once you go into the next trimester.”

“I wouldn’t trust Pycelle if he said the sky was blue and the night was dark.” She snaps, swallowing her bread and taking a sip of her drink.

“Well, I prefer Pycelle examining you over Qyburn,” he says, and Arya shudders.

“Fair enough,” she nods “that man’s eyes are dead.”

Tommen considers telling her that his mother had asked whether or not Arya should go to Qyburn, just to get a second opinion, but decides it isn’t worth the risk of Arya exploding. He’d dealt with it himself, saying he believed in the Grand Maester’s skills.

In truth, he believed in Pycelle’s skills the same way he believed in dogs being better than cats - not at all.

“Tom?” Arya says from across the table, and when he focuses on her he sees she’s got her eyes all wide and round in her face, the way she does when she wants something.

“What?” he asks.

“Go get me some oranges, will you darling?”

“You sound like my mother,” he says shuddering, and the look on her face is all the prompting he needs to get out of the room like the hounds of the seven hells are after him, and not return until he has the finest oranges in the whole of King’s Landing as a peace offering.

.

The new High Septon is an older man, who blesses their pregnancy whilst looking at Arya like she was a devil herself, extracting his hands as quickly from her middle as decorum will allow. Arya doesn’t seem to notice, but Tommen does.

He is pulled aside by one of the High Sparrow’s followers when everyone is mingling and Arya is in a spirited conversation with a Fossoway, using her hands so much she almost smacks a waiter in the face.

“I trust,” the High Sparrow’s voice is soft in the room Tommen’s been led to “that you will be raising your child in the Faith of the Seven.”

Tommen blinks, confused. “Of course, your holiness.”

“Gods be good,” the High Sparrow says, smiling now, but it doesn’t reach his mud brown eyes “I only ask, your Grace, because of your wife’s false gods.”

Tommen’s jaw clenches, as it does whenever somebody tries to say that Arya is not good enough in some way, but he forces himself to relax and paste a smile on his face. “She comes to worship as I do,” he tells him “whilst her father kept the Old Gods, as does her region of birth, her mother raised her in the light of the Seven.”

“But does she know she must choose? Between truth and lies, between the light and the dark.”

Tommen frowns and uses a deliberately light tone even while he can feel his blood beginning to boil “She must choose? I was unaware.”

“Love.” The High Sparrow says, voice gentle again but Tommen doesn’t think by the way he says it that he has ever truly experienced the feeling, as if it is beneath him, “The gods love us all, your Grace, and their love is perfect. You love your wife, I have no doubt by the way you look at her. It is a beautiful thing. But whilst the gods are perfect, us mortals are not. Love can blind to faults and imperfections - even kings can be fooled.”

“There is nothing wrong with my wife’s decision not to abandon the Old Gods,” Tommen says “And if you wished to object to our union you are several months too late. Our child shall be raised in the light of the Seven, but it is my wife’s prerogative whether or not she discards the gods of her homeland.”

Tommen turns, and makes for the door. He’s so angry, and his face must reflect it because the two monks step sharply to the side so he can unlatch the door and make it back to the festivities.

“I hope you are right, your Grace,” the High Sparrow says from behind him “For the sake of your child and immortal soul.”

Tommen slams the door behind him with a bang, a feeling of foreboding churning through him.

.

“I knew I didn’t fucking like him,” Arya swears once he’s told her about the encounter back in her rooms. He’s seriously considering being done with it and officially moving, as he spends most of his free time here or in the practice yard anyway.

“Maybe,” Tommen says, haltingly “Maybe you should stay away from the godswood for a while. Just to be on the safe side.”

Arya looks at him as if he’s grown a second head.

“No, Tom, I will not stop praying to my gods just because some wizened old man says I should. I come to the Sept with you, I will not sacrifice my religion for politics.”

She spits out the final word like it’s a curse.

“Of course not,” he says quickly “I’m sure it’ll blow over.”

“If it doesn’t I think you’ll have to anoint a new High Septon,” Arya mutters, beginning to unravel her hair from where it is piled on top of her head - a rarity for her, but she said she didn’t mind if it was only for the ceremony.

(She’d also said that it would ‘shut your mother up, she’s been talking about how I’m not adopting southron fashions’ and the mere memory makes a smile appear on Tommen’s face.)

“Can I do that?” Tommen asks, sitting down on the bed and unlacing his boots.

“Probably,” she says “Look at what Joffrey got away with, for gods sake. You’re the king, it’s not like anybody’s going to come up to you and say you can’t.”

“This one might,” he says, and hearing the worry in his voice Arya turns around.

“He can’t do shit,” she tells him “Not unless we let him. I will continue going to pray in the Godswood, and accompany you to the Sept, and we will have a baby and everything will be fine. Just see if it won’t.”

Tommen does something stupid then. He believes her.

.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Tommen bursts into the Small Council chambers, bellowing, fury thrumming through every bone in his body.

His mother is sitting at the head of the table, writing something, and looks up sharply at her son. Pycelle jerks in his seat and Mace Tyrell jumps, his hand flying to his heart. Qyburn barely reacts at all, scarcely looking up from his book.

“Tommen? What do you-”

“Don’t give me that,” he growls, feeling more like a lion than he has ever felt before. He thinks he could tear her to pieces right now, and that terrifies him. “You know what you’ve done.”

Mother looks- concerned, for lack of a better word, but Tommen sees through it, he sees the smoothness of her brow and lack of shock on her face.

“Darling, I don’t know-”

_“MY WIFE IS IN A PRISON CELL!”_

The room falls silent at that.

“Your grace-” Mace Tyrell begins to speak but Tommen, so full of vitriol and rage, silences him with a look of pure fury. Then he turns back to his mother.

“I know you armed the Faith, without telling me. I know you arranged this with the High Sparrow. I know everything you’ve been doing. I know you dislike Arya-”

“What gave you that idea-”

“The way you two look at one another like you want to tear each other’s hair out! But I never thought you’d go this far, even though I heard all the terrible things you said to Margaery and Sansa when they were engaged to Joffrey-”

“Why would I get the Faith to incarcerate my good-daughter?”

“Because you’re _jealous.”_ The word comes out effortlessly, the truth of the statement intact in Tommen’s mind “Because you can’t bear not being the Queen anymore. Because you know that if you held her directly she’d be released immediately and you’d take her place. Because my wife worships the Old Gods, and that’s all the excuse you needed to set the High Sparrow on her like a bloodhound.”

“Tommen-” she begins, sounding far less sure now.

 _It’s an act,_ he reminds himself, _just like Arya has been telling you for years. Ever since Winterfell._

“Take her to her chambers and put her under house arrest,” he orders the guards at his side.

“No- Tommen-” she says, struggling as she is pulled away.

“Don’t let anyone in to see her unless they petition me first. She will stay imprisoned for every moment my wife is. Am I understood?”

After a chorus of _yes, your Grace_ ’s, the doors slam behind him and Tommen makes eye contact with Pycelle and Qyburn, who finally seems to have realized there’s something happening outside of his book.

“Your Grace, surely you are hasty, imprisoning your own mother-” Pycelle begins.

“That is what I do when a family member betrays me. You, Grand Maester, are no kin of mine. Step carefully. You too, Qyburn. If I hear even a whisper you are trying something, you will be having a one way trip down to the Black Cells.”

Then, he turned to Mace Tyrell. “I hope, good ser, that you will join me in freeing my wife. As everyone else on this table appears to be incapable of supporting the King and not his mother, I believe the small council needs a shake up. Qyburn, you are hereby removed. Pycelle, watch your step. And Lord Tyrell - should I succeed in freeing my wife with your assistance, I believe more of your family will be joining us.”

Mace Tyrell puffs himself up like a prize peacock, and Tommen knows this approach has worked. But he’s still so angry, and he still has a wife to rescue.

.

He ends up taking five of his seven Kingsguard with him to the Great Sept, one guarding his mother and of course, one was in Dorne with his sister Myrcella. He also brings a swarm of guards he knows are loyal to him, and not his mother, as they were originally from the Stormlands and had fought alongside his father.

A long line of the Devout has formed across the steps, and Tommen knows if he were thinking clearly this would concern him.

He is not thinking clearly. It does not concern him.

They have no weapons except their truncheons, and none of them are warriors, not like the men behind Tommen. None of them have a pregnant wife being held captive. None of them are as furious as he is.

“His Holiness is praying,” one says. The seven pointed star carved onto his forehead makes Tommen cringe inside, as he can see that infection is rife in the unhealed wound “He will not be disturbed.”

“Oh yes,” Tommen said, climbing onto the step below the Most Devout and yet being taller than the monk that had spoken “He will be.”

“Give the order, and we’ll tear out this rabble,” a Kingsguard by his side says.

“You mean, kill them?” Tommen says, and rubs his chin for effect as if he’s thinking it over. He’s not. He made up his mind the second he heard Arya had been taken from the godswood as she was praying in solitude.

“You’d be sending them the meet the gods that they love, your Grace.”

Tommen turns to the Most Devout.

“Will you force my hand, and spill blood in the Sept, or will you step aside and tell the High Sparrow that he needs to cut his prayers short for the day?”

The Most Devout swallows, and Tommen meets their leaders eyes.

 _Let him see how serious I am,_ Tommen thinks, _let him see how I would burn their church to the ground. Let him see what I would do. Let him see me roar, so he need not hear._

“Step aside,” one of the Most Devout says, and the monks split apart.

As Tommen mounts the steps, he says to the Kingsguard at his side quietly “I may still accept that offer of yours, ser. Keep awares.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tommen knows the Kingsguard is smiling.

.

The High Sparrow looks annoyingly unruffled, standing in the centre of the Sept.

“Your Grace, my mid-morning prayers were disturbed.”

“I think I will live with it on my conscience.” Tommen cuts the words away, and he doesn’t know where his rage is coming from anymore - the fact that Arya was just taken, that he’d listened when she’d insisted she had to be alone with her gods, that he hadn’t seen the High Sparrow as a threat - that his wife is locked away somewhere, pregnant and alone and doesn’t know he’s coming for her.

The boy Tommen was a year before wouldn’t have come, he would have been to scared, would have locked himself away in a room and waited for it all to get better and made himself utterly helpless by refusing to make a stand - but Tommen isn’t that boy anymore.

He’s had Arya.

As much as Mother says she’s been a bad influence, Tommen cannot believe it.

“Considering you kidnapped my wife.”

“Kidnapped is a harsh word, your grace-”

“You took her from her home, against her will, and have her locked up beneath our feet. I fail to see how this is anything other than kidnapping.”

“Your Grace,” The High Sparrow says “You have been blinded by your devotion to her. It is commendable, and in the light of the Seven, correct, that a man should love his wife as you love yours. But she is impure. Her gods are corrupting the child that grows in her womb-”

“Release my wife,” Tommen interrupts, and takes a step forward. His Kingsguard move with him, and it comforts him that they are armed to the teeth. They can take one filthy old man and fanatics in loose robes if it comes to it.

The High Sparrow is unmoved “She needs to be converted.”

“She needs to be in the Red Keep, with me. She needs a doctor. It is freezing in here, and if she loses our child, I swear to you I will burn down this sept with all of you in it. Count yourselves lucky I have not done so already.”

“Your Grace, I wish only to serve the gods and the realm, and this is the way-”

“This is the way if you want to die very soon.” Tommen tells him, trying to channel the spirit of Grandfather, who had terrified more than one man into submission. “Think of my father, septon. Think of how he tore this country apart when the woman he loved, another Stark, was stolen from him. Remember that I am his son, and you have just made me very, very angry. Now if I do not see my wife in the next minute then I will give the command that your followers throats are slit one by one.”

The High Sparrow had gone very pale. “You’ll regret this.” He says.

Tommen looks at him, long and hard “I don’t think so.”

When Arya comes through the door, Tommen thinks that his legs will lose their strength - she is dressed in a grey rag, her hair down and to his pride, she sees the septas bringing her in have bruises forming, and the skin of her knuckles is broken.

“Tom,” she says when she sees him, voice breaking as she says his name.

“Let her go.” he orders the septas, who look to the High Septon who nods before doing as he commands. He really doesn’t care.

Her feet are bare and bloodied on the stone floor, and she makes her way over to him on shaking legs. She stumbles into his arms and he kisses her shoulder, her neck, her forehead.

“You came,” she says, lip trembling.

Tommen runs his thumb over her temple and looks very seriously into her eyes “I will always come for you.” At that, she lets out a little sob and flings her arms around his neck.

“Your Grace, as the Seven’s representative on this planet-”

“Shut up,” he swears at the High Sparrow “If you ever come near my family again I will have you torn limb from limb. They will never even find what’s left of you. And before that, if my wife is not in a forgiving mood, this will be your last day before meeting the Seven - I promise to the old gods-” he sees the High Septon flinch and in reply he gives him a feral grin “and the new.”

.

After Tommen has had his wife examined for any wounds or trauma to the baby or mother, tucked Arya into bed, and comforted her into a sleep after a lot of crying and whimpering and _don’t leave me’_ s and _kill him, kill him for me, kill him_ being desperately whispered in his ear, and posted two guards outside the room and one within, after releasing his mother and telling her next time he won’t be so lenient when she plots treason, after appointing Randyll Tarly and Margaery Tyrell to the Small Council as Master of War and Mistress of Whispers respectively, after writing to Uncle Kevan and asking him to come to King’s Landing to be his Hand, after all that, Tommen feels no guilt or doubt or even the slightest hesitation when he signs the warrant for the High Sparrow’s death with a flourish.

Or for putting the head on a spike above the Red Keep as a warning to other holy men and women who seem to think that they can touch his family.

**Author's Note:**

> Longer than usual, and a bit angsty. I'm quite proud of this one. Tell me if you liked it!


End file.
